A Time After
by Asylum-Fry
Summary: The line between reality and memory becomes blurred together after the Planet Express ship makes a horrible crash. Leela thinks Fry is lost forever, and meanwhile, a mysterious kidnapper has plans for her.
1. Introduction

A Time After 

Disclaimer: If I owned Fry... heh heh heh heh....

A/N: And now, a fan fiction that needs no introduction... oh, wait, perhaps it does. The first part may seem a bit confusing, especially that last line. This is the introductory chapter, a flashback before Fry wakes up and –

~

Introduction 

The Planet Express ship flew through the emptiness of space, past assortments of planets, stars, nebulas, and other spaceships. The delivery of uranium to the nuclear testing facility on Paris 6 had been a success, and the crew was headed home.

Fry reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box. In it was the best gift Fry could afford, after making several deals with Bender. A traditional diamond engagement ring, adorned with moon sapphires and mars rubies along the sides. It had cost him a lot, but he knew it would all be worth it. He just had to find the right moment.

Bender whistled, propping his legs up on one of the consoles. He'd been lucky the past few days. Fry had been such an idiot, he'd promised Bender his body after he died, when he could have simply begged him to steal the ring for him. Either way, Bender was a happy robot.

The ship cruised past Mars, where Amy had probably finished vacationing while they were gone. She'd be back at the Planet Express headquarters, waiting to do a routine check of the ship's hardware and parts.

The videophone rang, and Leela answered it. "Hello?"

"Leela, it's good to see you again!" the man on the screen said. He was a pasty man with a sax strapped around him.

"Sean, listen, I'm not interested any more."

"You have me all wrong. That whole thing was a misunderstanding; those were _my _couch's fibers. Hear me out, give me a second chance."

"No, get out of my life."

Sean sighed and put the saxophone to his lips. He played a slow blues song. Leela sighed, while Fry turned around in distress.

"Fine, Sean. One date."

"All right, I'll see you at Elzar's on Saturday at seven." The videophone screen went blank, and Bender started laughing.

"What's gotten into you?" she asked, incredulous.

  
"Oh – oh man – you've probably just crushed Fry," Bender spluttered, breaking into more raucous laughter. "And after he promised me his corpse! Poor meatbag."

Leela gave Bender an odd look, then swiveled her chair over to face Fry. She could see him slumped over his control panel, face hidden in his arms. Confused, she called to him.

"Fry?"

"I suppose you think this is a game," he muttered darkly. He lifted his head up. The reflection on the glass in front of him looked furious.

"I don't know what Bender meant, am I missing something?"

"Oh, nothing, Leela," Fry's tone reached a sarcastic level. "You don't miss a thing. You never noticed my feelings, you never acknowledged anything I did for you, you haven't missed a thing."

"Look, a date with Sean can't hurt. He's a nice guy, but I have –"

"That's what you think! You're so easily tricked that I can't believe what you're trying to tell me!"

"Calm down, buddy," Bender said worriedly. He and Leela were both giving Fry wary looks.

"I almost forgot to give you this. Take it and have a fucking great time at Elzar's tonight." Fry turned around and opened the box, the ring sparkling as the light danced off of it. Then he snatched it up and threw it at her.

There was a second of stunned silence as the ring flashed through the air, slashing Leela above the eye and sent flying elsewhere. The cut began to bleed, but Leela was still lost for words.

The ship had already entered the atmosphere. They were passing through the thin layer of smog above New New York when the ship began to lurch and drop out of the sky.

"Fry, what did you do?" Leela screamed, grabbing the controls. Noticing they were useless, she lifted her eye to the ground that was coming up to meet them through the glass front of the ship.

"I didn't do anything! Maybe the ship is malfunctioning!" Fry panicked. She could see him fumbling with the straps on his seat. Bender was hiding his eyes in preparation for the landing they were about to make.

Leela tore her eye away from Fry just as the ship hit the empty lot and burst into flaming explosions.

~

Far away, in both time and space, Fry opened his eyes.


	2. Scene 1

A Time After 

A/N: Yes, cliffhangers. You've gotta love those. Unfortunately, my cliffhangers and chapters are wildly tangled so that I never really pick up where I've left off. Which means you all have no idea why Fry opened his eyes, or where, or anything. But I do – mwahahaha!

~

Scene 1 

Back at the Planet Express Headquarters, Leela washed out her coffee mug. She was free to help Amy repair the ship, which had been costly to build. The Professor, it turns out, had a stash of money he had hidden and forgotten in case the original ship had been destroyed, and so he made a new one. Bender was probably helping her in Leela's place. He'd upgraded his programming after Fry died, in order to work mindlessly. He seemed to be a sober wreck for days after the crash.

"Poor bot," Leela said quietly to herself.

She left the mug by the sink and walked into the hangar, where Amy was fixing on one of the engine thrusters. Bender held it while she melded it one better.

"How's it coming, Amy?" Leela asked.

"Just fine. I'm glad Bender finally got that program change. If he'd gone another week the way he had, I swear I'd change his software myself." Amy turned off the torch and looked down from the hover-platform she stood on. "Hey Leela, want to come with me and Kif to the Hip Joint tonight? You may get lucky there..."

Leela looked at the ground. "I couldn't do that to Fry."

"Spleesh, Leela, he's dead! You have to move on eventually. Even Bender's moved on."

"You're right, but I still want to just... go home tonight. Nibbler will be waiting."

"Suit yourself." Amy went back to melding.

Leela turned around and headed for the door. She wanted to go home, it was probably better for her to. She'd been sleeping badly as of late and needed a nap. The videophone rang in the conference room and she was obliged to get it.

"Hello?" she asked. The enormous monitor was totally dark, but a few shapes could be seen, including the silhouette of person in front of the other phone.

"Leela." The voice that spoke had both a raspy and a robotic sound to it. Not familiar enough to place her finger on it, so she squinted at the speaker.

"How do you know my name? Have we met before?"

"Your name was simple enough to find out. I just want you to know that we will be meeting shortly. There is no escape, mutant."

"How did... who told... what's going on?"

Leela thought she saw the man's teeth flash briefly as he grinned. "Tonight."

The screen went blank, leaving Leela unnerved. Someone outside her work knew her secret, but she didn't know who. If the person really did know her identity, then there probably wasn't any harm in finding him out.

~

Fry's thoughts were very dim. All he could see was a pale green haze. In front of him floated wires, which were connected to him by suctions all over. He tried to move, but couldn't. A series of bubbles issued from his mouth as he struggled, but the wires held taut and the breathing tubes nearly yanked from his nostrils. He ceased panicking. Maybe someone would come and tell him what was going on.

~

Leela sat in bed reading a book. She hadn't really been paying attention to the story. Rather, she was imagining what this shady character that knew about her was going to do, and how he would find her.

She heard a sound in the other room, like glass breaking. Scared, she sat upright. There was a muffled bit of squealing and jabbering from Nibbler, but it was silenced. Confused, she started to get out of bed, dropping the book. Dressed in only a bra and underwear, she was unprepared. She stared at the door while edging to her wardrobe, where she left her gun.

Out of nowhere, the door seemed to fly off its hinges and crash open. Something moved quickly to hit the lights, sending the whole apartment room into darkness. Leela gasped as a cold, metal arm held her hands behind her back, and tried to kick. Her foot connected with metal plating underneath clothing. It was useless to try and fight her attacker.

She felt a piece of cloth being pushed at her nose and mouth, and unwittingly inhaled. Everything became blurry and Leela felt herself slipping into some sort of fevered nightmare.


	3. Scene 2

A Time After 

A/N: That was no cliffhanger! Shameful. Also, last chapter was really short.... if you want to call it a chapter. Better to imagine this as all coming together when I let TLZ put it up. But now.... more will be revealed!

Also, part of this chapter has been storyboarded. Isn't that awesome?

(Note: If this fanfic doesn't make any sense, don't worry. That wasn't what I was aiming for.)

~

Scene 2 

The window was frosted with blue ice, and the view outside was just about as interesting as the frozen crystals. The darkness in the room was not unbearable; conserving the energy here wasn't hard when you didn't have to eat, breathe, or use much electricity. He'd be in trouble when his minion and prisoner arrived, they needed the valuable resources that were hard to come by here. 

Ah, well, he'd get rid of one of them and make a few changes to the other. Then, world domination would be imminent.

~

Leela found herself staring at a grey ceiling, unable to understand how long she had been. She felt sick, like she was going to throw up. After several more moments of silent confusion, she tried to get up. Everything was working like normal, but she felt a bit banged-up and sore. She even saw a bruise on one of her arms, which was odd. Then it came to her – she wasn't in her apartment!

She felt an adrenaline rush, and began to really study the room she was in. It was a small room, lit by a single lighting panel in the center of the room, with an uncomfortable bed, a dresser attached to the wall, and a small door that was open to reveal a bathroom. Leela felt cramped, and she was freezing as well. She noted that she was in the same undergarments she had been in when the stranger entered her apartment and knocked her out.

Maybe he'd been kind enough to leave her some clothes to wear.

She walked over to the dresser, each step across the cold floor burning her feet. She opened the top drawer, but found nothing. She was lucky with the next drawer; several pairs of all of her clothing were neatly folded in there. She hastily put on a shirt and a pair of pants, though they did almost nothing to protect her from the freezing atmosphere of the room.

She spotted the door release, and hurried over to it with bare feet. Her boots seemed to be missing, but it didn't matter. The door hissed open almost silently. Leaning her head out into the dark hallway, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. She tentatively put a foot out, and when she felt safe enough, exited the room.

The whole ship she was on seemed foreboding and dreamlike. She didn't open any of the doors in case her kidnapper lurked behind one, ready to do something terrible to her. Finally, she came to the end of the hallway, and found the starship's bridge.

There was nobody in it when she entered. The whole place was darkened, and the only light came from a computer screen that was built into the pilot's control station, a little behind the steering mechanism. The blue glow was sharp contrast to the dreary nighttime onboard. Leela edged to the pilot's seat and sat down, admiring the view out of the front of the ship. The chair was stiff, but it was better than laying awake in that bed wondering what would happen next.

For what seemed like hours, Leela watched as the ship slowly orbited a gaseous blue planet, almost forgetting how very cold it was in the room. The light of a sun 'rising' from behind it made the frost on the outside of the window glitter and sparkle, and left her feeling slightly less homesick than she was before.

Finally, she turned her eye on the screen in front of her. There was nothing on the screen but a map of the surrounding planets, and the one they were above in the center. None of the names on the map looked familiar, or even in English. Small white letters at the bottom seemed to proclaim an urgent message in a strange language that Leela had never seen before. As she attempted to read it, she heard someone enter the room. The lights came on and momentarily blinded her, and by then the person was standing right behind her, a warm, human hand resting on her shoulder.

~

Fry could finally understand that something weird was happening. The thick green water, doubled with the wires, made escape somewhat impossible. He tried to reach out in front of him, but his fingers hit solid glass. His mind began to race, just as something spoke to him from outside the liquid prison, a distorted voice.

"He's made a complete recovery."

~

Later on, in the dining hall of the ship, Leela and her captor ate a meal in a very cold silence.

He'd found her, all right; he gave her such a shock that she had nearly screamed when he grabbed her shoulder like that. Forcing her away from the computer, he had led her back to her quarters, and this time guarded the door after putting her inside. She'd sulked for a while, but he opened it later and told her that the meal was ready.

The kidnapped chewed his food, each time the rectangular metal plate that went from under the left eye to his lip shifted. His entire left eye was a robotic one, with an odd, square target-like pupil, and other plating around it, probably to hold it in place. The other eye stared mournfully ahead, glossy and slightly clouded. The eyelid drooped over it as though dead, and too right that entire thing was. The rest of the kidnapper seemed shrouded in shadow, as he wore a baggy hooded robe of some kind, trying to mask most of himself. The other parts that could be seen were his hands; one perfectly normal right hand, and one robotic left one.

Leela stared at him the entire time, trying to get eye contact. Once in a while, she saw his robotic eye briefly lock on her own, then look away again as though nothing happened. So desperate was she to try and get a reaction, she was holding her spoon in the air for a while just staring, until finally, the kidnapper couldn't stand it any more.

"Why don't you put your fork down while you're eating? You don't seem to know any proper table manners," he chided, half-jokingly.

"Am I supposed to show respect to a man who's just dragged me god-only-knows-how-many light years from my own home?"

"A good point... but you still need to show good etiquette. You should be glad I didn't do any more damage to you than handle you a little too roughly when I brought you down to the ship. And I'm sorry for that."

Leela mumbled something about disrespect at the offender, all the while keeping an eye on him.

"Look, Leela. You and I may be stuck on board this ship for a while, so let me tell you some things." He leaned on his robotic arm, and gestured the human one at her. "Don't stick that nose of yours anywhere you know it shouldn't be, don't mess with me when I'm not in a friendly mood, and drop the innocence act. You're not fooling anyone."

"Innocence act?" Leela guffawed. "I deserve to know a few things. Namely, where are we, why did you kidnap me... and what is your name, or at least the name you're called by?"

He looked away, as though she'd struck him. In a quiet voice, he admitted, "I don't have one."

"People had to call you something," Leela pointed out, giving him an odd look.

There was another lapse of silence, in which Leela increased her staring pressure. Finally, the captor started to crack under it and, grumbling, explained what he could of his past.

"I suppose at one point I had a name. I'll be damned if I could remember it now, or for that matter, anything about my past. It's all just... not there. Like I have it, but can't see it. I get a flash of déjà vu here and there, and sometimes even a brief sliver of memory, but nothing so big as to give me any hints about myself." He paused, the silence almost loud as his voice dropped away. "Happy now?"

"To an extent." Her expression softened as she imagined what it was like to have no past, no sense of self. A shadow of a person... "Tell me what you can remember about your past."

He looked away, the cold blue planet reflecting off his dead right eye. "I'm not ready to talk about it."


	4. IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE!

AUTHOR'S NOTE! IT'S IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO LOOK AT!  
  
Alright, alright. I hate this fanfic and I will now leave it to die. The plot changed every time I wrote a chapter. I'm going to change it a lot more, and come up with a REAL fanfic that actually works. Sorry if you thought this was any good, you should have left a review.  
  
I'll work on some other stuff probably, my art's on TLZ so I'll be doing that kind of stuff. The revised version of this should come in one piece, and take a while to write (like it does for real authors.... hehehe I'm such an ass, I can't write fanfiction properly).  
  
In conclusion, say goodbye to this fic (and that other one I wrote, but that's been abandoned too) and expect the revised A Time After (which may be renamed Chronicles of the Utterly Bizarre, if it works better by the time I'm done, since I may make it a several-part story) to come out soon... like 'within 30 days' soon.  
  
~ Asylum-Fry  
  
Also, to that one reviewer (whom I forgot the name of): of course I saw the last episode! And I hated it! I've discovered a way for the revised version of this fic to show what happened after the end of TDHAIP and make it work in my favor... because I'M the author! Mwahahahahahaha - *gets zapped by lightning* Owwww... 


End file.
